Walking down the street today, you may have seen an advertisement regarding breast cancer. Or maybe you’ve saw two or three or maybe even dozens of ad’s regarding breast cancer. That’s because October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. All over the world youths are participating in rallies, marathons and charities to help raise awareness for Breast Cancer in the hopes that one day a possible cure will be found for this deadly disease.
Well according to a recent BBC report, that day may in fact come sooner rather than later. According to the report, a team of scientists working out of the University of Cambridge have managed to pinpoint a human gene that is linked to more than half of all breast cancers. “The gene, NRG1 (neuregulin-1), is also thought to play a role in many bowel, prostate, ovarian and bladder tumours. As well, The Cambridge team showed that the gene – which helps to suppress the growth of cancer – is located on chromosome 8.” If the scientists at the Cambridge have indeed managed to find the gene which helps suppress the growth of cancer, then it means that science has taken a huge step forward in the fight against cancer.
According to Dr. Paul Edwards, the lead research in this study, “NRG1 could be the most important tumour suppresser gene discovery in the last 20 years as it gives us vital information about a new mechanism that causes breast cancer. We have got strong evidence that the gene is implicated in breast cancer but we have no reason to think it’s not the same for other cancers, including prostate and colon cancer.” The second part of Dr. Edwards statement is even more encouraging. If this gene can be used to repress not only breast cancer, but other cancer’s as well, then scientists could well be on their way to finding a cure for cancer once and for all. Although this is only a small step in the fight to find a cure for cancer, this breakthrough in cancer research could very well help scientists understand the genetics involved with cancer, which can in turn help them diagnosis it accurately and develop a cure for it.
However, this marvelous breakthrough in cancer research could not have been achieved by the scientists at the University of Cambridge without the proper funding. Often times, scientists are not able to run the necessary tests and studies needed to make discoveries like this one because of a lack of funding. In this case, the scientists at Cambridge could not have received the necessary funding to discover this gene without help from the Breast Cancer Campaign, which helped fund part of the study. This just goes to show that all the money that we donate to charities and all the marathons we run or parades we attend do indeed help make a difference worldwide, because without our help, these organizations would not have the necessary funding to donate to scientists who are trying to make this world a better place.
Pessimists will argue that a lot of the donations that we give or collect end up being wasted, because a lot of the research that is conducted in studies such as this are often deemed failures as nothing is discovered. But without the failures, we would not be able to learn from our mistakes and make improvement on our research to the point where we have been able to find a gene that suppresses cancer.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and although this breakthrough in research is great news, there is still a lot of work to be done. So the next time you pass on of those Breast Cancer Awareness Ad’s don’t just look away; think about what you can do to help make a difference.
(All pictures are sourced from http://www.bbc.co.uk/)
By Stephan Popescu
Blog Writer 2009-2010, Change Tomorrow’s World
